IN the wild enthusiasms of 1391 neither Christian nor Jew could be expected to
consider, much less foresee the long range consequences of mass conversion at the
point of the sword. The Christian saw only the final solution of an intolerable
problem. The Jew saw only final and hopeless disaster. Yet a whole century was to
pass before either result would be achieved.

As Jews, the children of Israel were being ground down in a new Egypt. As
Christians they had the same rights and privileges as all other Christians, and a
status higher than anything they had enjoyed even in the palmiest days of their
Golden Age. They could live where they

pleased, dress however they liked and enter whatever trade suited their fancy.
No office-public, private or ecclesiastical-was closed to them.

The New Christian, or "Converso" as he was called, prospered as never before,
both in the trades and professions of his ancestors and in areas previously
denied him as a Jew. He took his place in the law, administration, army and
judiciary. He sat in municipal councils and dispensed wisdom in the
universities-all places where the sons of Judah had- never been seen before.
Converso names dominated the rolls of jurists, historians, poets, scholars and
men of letters. They appear as physicians, personal advisers, ambassadors and
tutors of the blood of the realm. By the early fifteenth century we find
Conversos exercising the offices of vice-chancellor, comptroller- general and
royal treasurer of Aragon, while others of their tribe are presiding over both
the supreme court of justice and the national Cortes. The admiral of Castile was
a Converso, as was the chancellor of that kingdom, and their New Christian kin
sat on the royal council.

If crossbreeding is the solution to the problem of "racial incompatibility," then
it must be noted that the Converso made strenuous efforts to homogenize the
races. Marriage between Jews and Christians had first been forbidden in Spain ten
years after the conversion of Constantine. Sexual intercourse on an ad hoc basis
was

1. Converso literally means convert, but from the beginning it was applied to any
Christian of Jewish ancestry, no matter how remote. The same is true of the terms
New Christian and Marrano (swine), a very popular label as we might
expect.

53

punished by death if the delinquents in the case were a male Jew and a lady
Christian. The reverse arrangement, however, was widely tolerated in accordance
with a self-indulgent tradition that is supposed to have some connection with
prerogative and manliness among the males of the superior "race."

Under the new arrangement of Christian togetherness, however, the Converso had
free access to the Christian marriage bed. Wealthy Conversos began buying either
their own way or their children's way into aristocracy by marriage with the Old
Christian nobility. Many of the latter, whose pride varied inversely with their
income, found nothing dishonorable in this arrangement since the money they
received had been purified at the baptismal font. The result was a massive
transfusion of Jewish blood into virtually all the noble houses of Spain. In
later years, when it was decided that a Jew was a Jew even when he was a
Christian, there was a widespread demand for genealogists to trim the family
tree, and historians broke out into controversies over family origins which are
still going on today. In the fifteenth century, however, nobody realized the
trouble they were causing for future generations.

Among the noble Conversos of the fifteenth century was Luis de Santangel,
secretary to the royal household, who persuaded Ferdinand and Isabella to finance
the dreams of Columbus. Don Juan Pacheco, marquis of Villena, was a virtual
king-maker who aspired to the hand of Isabella of Castile only to lose out to
another Converso, Ferdinand of Aragon. Other families, such as the Caballerias,
the Santa Fes and the Santa Marias,

54

specialized in bishops and archbishops, physicians and theologians, and dedicated
anti-Semites.1

The influx of Conversos into the Church of the True Faith reached almost
fantastic proportions. Beside the army of Conversos who served the banner of
Christ as humble recruits in the priesthood and monastery, there were many others
in the higher echelons. A random sample includes the following: royal chaplain.
to Henry III; confessor to Henry IV; two confessors to Queen Isabella; physician
to the pope; papal nuncio to the court of Castile; general of the Geronomite
order; grand masters of the orders of Santiago and Calatrava; bishops of Coria,
Cordova, Cartagena, Burgos and Siguenza; archbishops of Granada and Toledo.
Perhaps the most eminent of all the Conversos of this era were the cardinal of
Saint Sixtus, Juan de Torquemada, and his celebrated nephew Thomas de Torquemada,
future Inquisitor General of
Spain.2

1. Ferdinand's mother was Juana Enriquez of the Converso family of that name. At
least it was widely believed in Ferdinand's day that the Enriquez family had a
strain of Jewish blood. Some historians, as recently as 1954, have denied this,
although their denials are based as much on indignation as on facts. On the other
hand, the supporters of the "Jewish" thesis have no real facts to offer either. I
have not taken any votes on the issue, but the more common view seems to be that
Ferdinand was a Converso, although a sufficiently diluted one to satisfy (and
vex) Jews and Christians alike. The greater number of opinions on one side
probably proves nothing in itself except that more people prefer one theory to
another. Genealogy is a difficult art under the best of conditions. When it is
further complicated by the mystique of blood purity, it becomes a bottomless
pit.
2. The same general observations about King Ferdinand (above) apply to the
Torquemadas. The stories that the scourge of Judaism himself had Jewish forebears
were repeated five

55

In the midst of his new freedom and prosperity the Converso often suffered from
agonies of despair and guilt for having given up the faith of his ancestors. From
the Inquisition trials of the late fifteenth century we get occasional glimpses
of the agitated state of mind of some of the New Christians who simply could not
adjust themselves to the circumstances forced upon them, despite the material
advantages they provided. The conditions under which Inquisition trials were
conducted make most testimony suspect. Since the present study is not designed to
be a historical novel, therefore, I must resist the temptation to record the many
juicy aberrations which crop up in these grim documents and limit myself to
evidence which is both well substantiated and plausible.

In the privacy (and relative safety) of their homes some Conversos begged Jehovah
for the deliverance He had granted in the past: "Oh God, deliver us as Thou
delivered the people of Israel." "Oh God, deliver us from these oppressors who
spy upon us and force us to betray the faith of our fathers." "Oh God, let the
Turk come among us as thy avenging arm. Let him destroy the church of our
oppressors and slay their holy men who make us live in deception among them."

centuries later about the sadists around Adolf Hitler and even about Der Fuehrer
himself. Historians of all persuasions, when they approach this question, stagger
a little. Some appear to be undecided about which view they prefer to take
because of the disturbing implications of either view whatever "school" the
investigator belongs to. A few resolve the dilemma by ignoring the subject
entirely. As for myself, I have no preferences in the matter. Whether or not
Torquemada was a full-Jew, half-Jew. fractional Jew. or pure Nordic. has no
bearing on the events of his time. The most it can do is provide an interesting
conversation piece for amateur psychologists and students of the bizarre.

56

Others sought refuge abroad. They sold all their worldly goods as quietly as
possible so as not to excite the suspicion of their neighbors. With their
families they made their way to the great port cities like Valencia and Barcelona
where they sailed away to rejoin the ancestral faith in the ghettos of North
Africa and the East. Many were apprehended on the docks and dragged out the rest
of their miserable lives in the Spanish galleys. Still others suddenly dropped
out of sight to reappear in the ghetto of a strange city where, at the cost of
their freedom and privileges as Christians and at the risk of being burned alive,
they sought membership in the despised and persecuted minority of Jews.
The most pathetic were the great majority who, like most of us, are too
frightened to do anything more than torture ourselves for our own fears. "Before
the True Messiah can come," said one, "we Conversos will have to make retribution
for having betrayed our faith." Every time he recited the mass, a Converso priest
confessed, he froze with terror. When he raised the Host and repeated the words
of Christ, "This is my Body," he expected at any moment to see the wrath of
Jehovah come to melt him down into nothing. " I am neither a Jew, nor a Moor, nor
a Christian," lamented another. " I am nothing. I pray God to kill me in some
horrible manner."

In the monastery of La Sisla in Toledo lived a friar Alfonso de Toledo, a
second-generation Converso whose father had come over to the True Faith in 1391.
Friar Alfonso became a monk because he just did not know what else to do. But
from the beginning God chastised

57

him with a stabbing guilt for the terrible thing he had done. Twice he left the
monastery to run far away. Both times his courage failed him and he came crawling
back to beg forgiveness of his superiors and to lacerate his soul with
meditations on the ancient Maccabees who had died gloriously for the Law of
Moses. He would seek out the Jewish janitors when they came to clean, following
after them and plucking at their sleeves to tell them he was really one of them
at heart. He too loved only the Law of Moses, and he envied them for living
honestly in their own faith. He begged them to call him Jacob, after his
grandfather, and to flee the country with him, for he did not know how to go
about it by himself. When the Inquisition came to Toledo and began burning
Judaizing Conversos, he envied the victims as martyrs blessed in the sight of
Jehovah. But, much as he wished that he too could be saved through martyrdom, he
could not face the horror of the necessary preliminaries. So he fled, this time
for good, to live with the greater tortures he carried in his head.

From the same monastery came another. Converso friar, Juan de Madrid, a man so
compulsively bold that he seemed to be deliberately seeking martyrdom. He boasted
that he was really a Jew, was proud of it, and that for every Mosaic rule he
followed he broke three Christian ones. He became a friar because that was the
best way to practice Judaism. In the solitude of the monastery he would be
shielded from the prying eyes of the Christian public. Besides, he could use the
power of the confessional to lead penitents into Mosaic practices. He scorned to
flee when the Inquisitors arrived in Toledo.

58

He cursed them openly and from his confessional booty announced to sinners that
it was a mortal sin to approve of the Inquisition. As he must have expected,
friar Juan was one of the first to be denounced and was burned a the stake.
However the Jews themselves felt toward the guilt-ridden Converso, they must have
been horrified at the behavior of their former colleagues who now became their
persecutors. Whatever their reasons-which I an confident everyone can explain to
his own satisfaction-some Conversos were determined to wipe out all reminders of
their past. Back in the early fourteenth century a learned Jew named Abner of
Burgos was reborn as a Christian at the age of sixty. Under his new name of
Alfonso de Valladolid he devoted his remaining fourteen years to a long series of
tracts against the Jews which earned him a certain historical fame (usually in
footnote form) as an early champion of anti-Semitism in Spain A few years before
the Massacres of 1391, Peter IV o Aragon had to restrain some recent converts
from making sallies into the ghetto at Mallorca, where the insisted on preaching
to their former Jewish friends and stirring up a general ruckus when the Jews
failed to respond sympathetically to their exhortations.

In the fifteenth century this sort of work acquired ; professional status which
was greatly enhanced by the special authority people attach to the revelations of
the reformed ex-enemy now working for our side. Joshes Lorca, former rabbi and
wise in the ways of the Talmud was transformed by baptism into Jerome of the Holy
Faith (Geronimo de Santa Fe). He offered his service

59

to Pope Benedict XIII 1 as personal physician and dialectical wizard against the
rabbis. Benedict sponsored a Great Debate at Tortosa in northern Spain in which
Geronimo proved, against the arguments of the leading rabbis of Spain, that Jesus
Christ was the True Messiah. The accounts of this "debate," recorded by eye
witnesses and contemporaries among the Faithful, call to mind another favorite
Spanish pastime-the Bullfight. The game was rigged in favor of the Matador. The
fourteen rabbis summoned into the ring were warned by the pope that he would not
tolerate any nonsense.

You, the most learned of the Hebrews, (he said) know ye that I am not here in
this place, nor have I convened you here to debate whether our religion or yours
is the true one. You are here only for Geronimo de Santa Fe who will prove to you
that the coming of the Messiah was verified long centuries ago, availing himself
of your own Talmud, a book forged by men much more learned than you. Be careful,
then, to debate only on this subject and no other.

Christian dignitaries flocked to Tortosa from all
over Spain and northern Europe. Geronimo, aided by the rightness of his cause,
demolished the feeble arguments of the rabbis in sixty nine logic-chopping
sessions, to the universal edification of the entire, company and
of

1. At this moment (1413) there were three popes, resulting from a long series of
follies generally dignified under the name of "conflicting political interests."
Spain supported Benedict, who guarded the heavenly gates at Avignon in the south
of France.

60

twelve of the fourteen rabbis, who were converted to the True Faith by the
inspired eloquence of their former colleague.

Geronimo followed up his victory at Tortosa with a missionary tour of the
northern provinces. A report to the king of Aragon tells of the wondrous
preachings of Geronimo, "illuminated by the Holy Spirit." He has made many
conversions among the Jews, and the only holdouts have been among persons "of
little worth." Even so, the report continues, "we have confidence in our Savior
Jesus Christ that they too will come to salvation in a few days." The report
concludes with a Scriptural observation about a shepherd and some lost sheep.
Some years later Geronimo de Santa Fe summed up his career in a book- "The
Scourge of the Hebrews "1 exposing the lewdness and subversions of the Talmud.
Other Conversos kept up the literary drumfire against the Jews. Pedro de la
Caballeria, in his "Zeal of Christ against the Jews, Saracens and Infidels,"2
maintained that the welfare of Christianity required the destruction in its midst
of the "synagogue of Satan" and, of course, of Moors and other infidels. Bishop
Paul of Saint Mary (Pablo de Santa Maria) -formerly Rabbi Solomon Halevi-after a
careful scrutiny of Scripture,3 concluded that the

Jews were a menace and the Massacres of 1391 had been fashioned by the hand of
God.

The undisputed leader of this inverted crusade was Alonso de Espina, former rabbi
turned Franciscan friar. He was a violent blend of his predecessor Ferdinand
Martinez, his contemporary Vincent Ferrer, and Thomas de Torquemada who was only
one short generation behind him. Like Martinez he preached holy extermination;
like Ferrer he thrust the Gospel on stiff-necked Jews, and like Torquemada he
called for an Inquisition to purge the Conversos.

Espina's great masterwork was his "Fortress of the Faith," published in 1459.
From the European rubble heaps of Christian hatred and murder, friar Alonso sifts
out all the popular legends about Jews who murder Christian children, set fire to
Christian houses, put hexes on Christian churches, stab Communion wafers and flog
crucifixes, abominate holy images, vomit ritual blasphemies on the Savior and the
Apostles and poison the Christian water supply.

For every Christian he cures the Jewish physician kills fifty others, and he
holds regular meetings with the other devils of his trade where they tally up the
numbers of their victims in testimony of their obedience to Jewish Law which
commands them to slay True Believers. They are waiting only for the coming of the
Antichrist to lead them against the Godly. Deep in the bowels of the Caspian
Mountains, behind a magic wall, between the castles of Gog and Magog, waits a
vast army of Jews

1. Fortalicium Fidei.

62

which has been growing since the time of the ancient world. They will form the
vanguard in the legions of Antichrist, their promised Messiah, when he comes to
grind down the enemies of Israel and restore the world to the Jews.
There is a great deal more but I see no need to muck about in such a cesspool any
longer than is necessary to catch its odor. It is, however, instructive though
depressing to note that some historians' judgments are so hedged in by a
mechanistic objectivity that they consider it "prejudice" to describe friar
Alonso for what he was-a homicidal zealot preaching mass murder.

For a few happy years the Converso seemed to have the world in his palm. Now he
was about to get his comeuppance. Friar Alonso, though a Converso himself, damned
the Conversos as Jews at heart, worming their way into high posts to deceive
princes and prelates, meanwhile practicing Jewish rites in secret and awaiting
the coming of the Antichrist to throw off their disguise and join in the
slaughter of the Faithful. This chant was quickly taken up by the Old Christians,
who needed no urging. Besides, they were better qualified than friar Alonso to
exalt the virtues of racial purity.